Race & Identity

For eight television seasons (NBC, 1984-92), the Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show, written by and starring comedian Bill Cosby, beamed an unflinching, yet humorous black family portrait into living rooms across America. Cosby, as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, presided over this historic foray into black upper-middle class life. The sitcom was a window into a certain, often enviable kind of black familial and romantic love, a showcase for amazing talent, and a place where the situations or "problems" of a

President Obama's daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don't I? So asked a pigtailed black girl plastered on buses and billboards around Washington, D.C. The White House blasted the political ad, which promoted healthy food options in public schools, as exploitative -- but the little girl's complaint should resonate with an administration that has prioritized healthy eating and food security, from both the East and West Wing of the White House.

Eyal Press is a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.  He is a contributing writer at the Nation and a journalist who has written extensively about politics, social issues and the world of ideas.  His essays, reviews, and feature stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, The Columbia Journalism… more

President Obama's biergarten moment at the White House on Thursday may have started out as a political stunt, but in the end it could become a model for the future of race relations in America. I'm not talking about the "teachable moment" nonsense. Nor am I particularly impressed by the idea that people of different backgrounds should get together to talk about their backgrounds. What's new here, and what I think might just stick, is the idea that people in conflict should sit down… more

Henry Louis Gates' arrest and President Obama's later remarks have led to a discussion about racial tensions and police conduct.

Ralph Eubanks, author and fellow at the New America Foundation, shares what he believes is teachable about this moment. Link to audio

About the only thing as disappointing as the frivolous arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the loud, almost gleeful chorus of "I told you so's" coming from his defenders. You've heard of schadenfreude -- taking pleasure in the suffering of others? Well, this was the peculiar political version. It's not that commentators were happy that Gates had allegedly been mistreated. But they seemed inordinately pleased that some aggrieved yet righteous person had come along to help them prove a point

The Root: We've all seen the police and media reports around your arrest last Thursday in Cambridge, Mass., Charles Ogletree issued a statement to The Root that included a synopsis of the incident. But what have you been going through since Thursday?

President Obama's visit to Ghana this month was downright biblical.

Barack Obama promised to transform health care and energy and America's role in the world. But what made tens of millions of Americans loopy with joy is the implicit promise that the young biracial senator would, through the power of his biography and charisma, heal racial divides. Throughout the presidential campaign and the brief but blissful post-inaugural delirium, countless trend pieces vividly described how blacks and whites were--gasp!--chatting amiably. They were giving each other Obama-inspired fist-bumps. Though there